Someone was shooting at our soldiers and Marines, our High Command called the Russian High Command on the Red Phone to ask, “what they hey is going on over there?”, the Russian commanders said, “not our guys, dude”, so our forces defended themselves by shooting back.

Did the Russians sacrifice Tom Clancy-style “hundreds” of their irregulars to protect what they wanted to keep secret? Mil-bloggers who looked into this think these losses are way overstated by our Media’s echo chamber, and I guess Secretary Mattis did not choose to correct them.

But if someone is shooting at our people, I would want authorization, at the highest levels if needed, for our people to call in an airstrike to protect themselves. This appears to be the difference in force protection “doctrine” that the prior Administration was weak on?

This was a real world test of red lines. Russia wouldn’t know what Trump would do until they probed our forces with their own. Now, everyone knows that the USA will respond to attacks against our allies in Syria and not just watch them get slaughtered.

The exception being the Ottomans. Doesn’t look like we know how to deal with that yet.

This was just as big a lesson to the Russians as being repeatedly shown their air defenses don’t work. It demonstrated to the world that Russia, Syria, Iran, and their proxy militias would easily be destroyed in a heads up conventional fight.

Obama could have done stuff like this but instead chose to sacrifice the lives of millions. Whenever judicious use of force could have been used to send the right messages, Obama failed to use it and thus sent the wrong messages. (Assuming that he had the same interests as America and her allies)